Tentative Reflections on Construction of Assessment Models for Buildings’ Sustainability Certification

Abstract

All over the word several rating systems have been produced to certificate the sustainability level of buildings. Experts agree on considering sustainability a typical field for multicriteria decision analysis, but buildings’ rating systems do not comply in a consistent manner this assessment approach. Proposals for using classical and hybrid ranking procedures are aimed to quantify the relative attractiveness of buildings, but do not give information on their absolute attractiveness. While several studies propose suitable application of multicriteria decision making techniques for assessing buildings’ sustainability with the purpose of choosing the best solution or obtaining a ranking on a set of alternative solutions, the present work focuses on assessment aimed at buildings’ sustainability certification, analyzing the aggregation phase of the assessment procedure. This work is intended to give some tentative reflections on construction of assessment models for buildings’ sustainability certification systems in the effective methodological frame of multicriteria decision analysis.